4 ways to create personalized marketing messages

One way to obtain higher levels of engagement and collect actionable data is to make personalization a priority. Use these tips to initiate personalized email marketing campaigns.

If I were to ask you if you would prefer to receive one-size-fits-all (spam) messages or ones that are personalized, which would you choose? I'm guessing that pretty much everyone would pick the personalized messages. They're more relevant, engaging, and actionable.

As a marketer, this is pretty much a no brainer - we know how our clients and prospects answer that question. Accomplishing personalized messaging is perceived as much harder to do in practice. But with a game plan and steady progress, you can transform your marketing program and your results from marginal to fantastic using personalization techniques.

Here are four ways to begin developing more personalized communications:

1. Ask questions and store them in your digital marketing database

A question or survey can even be just a button in an email. Send an email that merely asks, "Did you buy?" Then, put two buttons in your email that delineate a "yes" or "no" response. The answer is then easily stored in your digital database and you will be able to send a different message to those that bought compared to those that did not.

Of course, you can add more information into your digital database by conducting a survey - or better yet, using progressive profiling techniques to gradually ask one or two questions in exchange for content or another offer. Make sure all this data is going into your digital database and that you are using it to tailor your messages. If you don't have immediate plans to use the data, I question the wisdom behind even asking the questions in the first place.

2. Integrate data from other systems in your company

CRM, order management, shopping cart, call center, and ERP systems are all great candidates for integrations. In these corporate systems, there is a goldmine of information that you can use to personalize messages.

Meet with other departments and understand what systems they have, and what data they are creating and maintaining. Figure out how you would use this data to personalize your messaging. Get your digital marketing platform's API guide and begin understanding how you can link data and feed data into your marketing platform, and then pull in your IT teammates to make it happen. Make sure they understand the importance of having this data connected to your marketing systems, or it will continue to be a back burner project for all.

3. Capture and use behaviors from within your own marketing systems

Behavioral data is among the most powerful data you can use to personalize communications. Why? It's fresh, immediately actionable, and highly relevant to each recipient

First, you need to add web tracking to your website. Explain the importance of this step to your website owners, and make sure they know that you have both synchronous and asynchronous tag management options.

Next, build out automated and triggered communications based on browse abandons of pages and sites, PDFs viewed, videos watched, emails opened and clicked, SMS messages opened, and more.

4. Link to data from other systems

Some of these systems might not even be owned by your company, but your customers and prospects are using them along their customer journey. Incorporating this important outside information will allow you to meet them on their turf.

Examples include webinars, event registration and attendance, geo-location activity, social participation, app downloads or actions and more. At IBM, we call these "Universal Behaviors." The beauty of a universal behavior framework is that you can capture real-time behavior happening in other systems, and link that data to triggered automated messages which are deployed by your digital platform. Perhaps the best part about it is that the communication - email, push or SMS - can happen not days or weeks later, but immediately. This is personalization at its best.

Employing these approaches singularly or in combination will ensure that you will remain fresh and relevant in what you are communicating. You will enjoy higher engagement metrics and results. Also, hopefully you can begin to taper down your non-personalized e-blasts that we have all come to loathe.

What are you doing to drive higher levels of personalization in your marketing department?

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CONTENT PERSONALIZATION: IT’S WHAT CONSUMERS WANT!

A frustrated consumer is never good for business. Three out of four consumers become frustrated when website content isn’t relevant to their interests, according to Janrain. The fact is, if your content doesn’t resonate with your target audience, you might as well ask them to ignore you.

According to Monetate, marketers see an average sales increase of 20 percent when employing content personalization. Because of convincing statistics like this, personalizing your content marketing message is critical for generating leads and conversions.

Below you’ll find four statistics that show consumers prefer personalization, even if it does mean sacrificing a bit of their privacy.

FACTS DON’T LIE

35% of Amazon’s revenue are generated by its recommendation engine, according to Venture Beat.

Personalization is hot! While it’s not surprising that Amazon rakes in the cash from product recommendations, the fact that recommendations constitute such a large percentage of the company's net revenue is notable.

This statistic shows that personalization is actually more popular than people might realize. It’s not overtly obvious how valuable product recommendation sales are for Amazon, but this statistic puts an end to that mystery.

75% of users select movies based on Netflix’s recommendations, according to a Gigaom article.

This statistic says two things: First, Netflix’s recommendation system works well. Second, Netflix users overwhelmingly find value in using recommendation feature.

Netflix collects a TON of data about its the users. To shed some light on this: Netflix receives about 4 million ratings per day, 3 million searches per day, geo-location data, metadata from third parties like Nielsen, and more. This huge amount of data allows Netflix to provide users with recommended films and television shows based on what they previously watched or what’s popular in their area.

Essentially, Netflix created a genomic web of its films that, when paired with big data, has resulted in very accurate, effective, and engaging personalized recommendations for its users.

61% of consumers feel better about a company that delivers custom content, and are more likely to buy, according to Demand Metric study.

Consumers are willing to share their data with you, so why not use it to your advantage? A study conducted by Accenture found that while 86 percent of surveyed consumers said they were concerned that their data was being track, 85 percent said they realized that data tracking make it possible for retailers to present them with relevant and targeted content.

For consumers, being tracked by companies is a necessary evil when it comes to receiving a personalized content experience. Be sure not to cross the line by over-personalizing your content. Consumers don't want to buy from a company they knows too much about them.

88% of marketers are considering adding content marketing personalization to their plans, according to a Direct Marketing article.

The overwhelming majority of marketers are embracing content personalization. Some might argue this might not be the best argument for embracing content personalization as a practice. However, given the fact that only 12 percent of companies surveyed said they aren’t planning on adding content personalization to their plans, it definitely says something significant.

Do yourself and your business a favor and embrace personalization as quickly as possible. If you still need to be educated on content personalization basics, I encourage you to check out some of my earlier blog posts on the topic.

The sooner you begin taking the necessary steps towards personalizing your content, the sooner you can begin reaping the benefits—increased conversions, increased leads, and decreased bounce rate.

PERSONALIZATION IS POWER

In the digital marketing space, personalization is critical when it comes to capturing the attention of consumers. Consumers have the tools to avoid irrelevant content on the Internet and they aren’t afraid to use them.

Who can blame them? Consumers are growing increasingly accustomed to personalized content, which also means that it is becoming increasingly important for companies to provide personalized content. For now, consumers are willing to share their data if it means they receive a personalized shopping experience in return.

Eventually, companies may track and collect consumer data whether we like it or not. This is why it's best to jump on the content personalization train early on.

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